Monthly Archives: August 2016

Nine years older in the lying mirror above the bathroom sink I shape the face of a man who looks back at me curious every morning the same face I don’t know.

6:30. A flight roars out of SAN two miles east.

Portuguese saw the sea level rising. Nine feet in 20 years with tourists wielding plastic money. Above the air quality report in the UT now as storms flood Midway, La Playa, OB and Coronado.

Beach and bluffs along the coast fall in as storms surging over Harbor Island, flood the runways at full moon, submerge embarcadero, Humphries, bones of ancient natives float up in the white sands of the strand and SeaWorld.

The sea digests a channel across 75, south of Loew’s and Coronado is again an island. Beachfront homes fight the tide in vain with concrete walls and lobby for coverage insurance companies exempted from their policies. La Jolla beach hotel and tennis club under water; paddle-boarders skim across approaches to bridges connecting Mission Bay and Pt. Loma. The Hilton surrounded by a concrete dike; looks out over a concrete viaduct full of cars as the ecosystem adapts to an atmosphere seeking equilibrium…

I was floored to see Richard Nixon on TV again, saying he’s running for President; the last time I’d seen him on TV, he was in tears, confessing to a bribe from a developer.

More surprised because I believed in the electoral process then. So I wasn’t surprised later about Watergate and Congress allowed the man who would be president to avoid indictment by resigning. Jerry Ford disappeared into the office of our national embarrassment.

I was incredulous when an untalented melodramatic actor was elected by the people to govern the state of California based on his appearance in General Electric commercials, then to hear he’s using State Police to break a strike at Boron, the company for whom he’d been a spokesperson in commercials. 20 Mule Team Borax. The UT said “the media loves him”.

Reagan’s ascent was as scripted as a Dickens novel, yet I still didn’t get that this was the result of planning that must have started when Kennedy was elected–or, perhaps, assassinated . 1960 or 1963.

Ronald and Nancy had their astrologer to advise them and so we forgive them of being guilty of designing the chaos incited by the War on Drugs, deregulation of the banks and the deals with Iran and Bin Ladin. The U-T depicted the presidential royalty as entitled to a few eccentricities. And anyway, the real decisions were made by bureaucrats. The direction of US economic, social and foreign policy must have been considered in making the office of president into such a complete joke that an Austrian weightlifter and actor specializing in depictions of authoritarian, fascist, if you will, slightly demonic supermen.

The Austrian weight-lifter. Arnold Schwarzenegger, mounted the dais in California, where he became Governor and behold if he isn’t supported by survivors of the murdered Kennedy’s camp. Arnold is much brighter than Ronald and seems cleaner than tricky Dick, and although an unmarried man with a history tainted by tales of womanizing, is given the pretense of family values but selling a Prussian Prime Minister in France might be easier than electing a countryman of the Fuhrer president.

Forcing the Chief Executive and Commander of the Armed Forces to resign for getting head from his adult intern in his home office was classic Republican strategy. The circus trial by media was a good thing in terms of gender politics. However, in a bizarre copycat manipulation of public opinion, in this city, a developer bought the city’s only newspaper to force a progressive Mayor to resign with a daily barrage of front page attacks suggesting sexual impropriety, the developer raised trial by innuendo in the press to global attention. The mayor, whose career the UT all but destroyed, was found innocent in a court proceeding after he resigned. The damage done to the people who elected him was incalculable in much the same way as the damage to public trust of government following the assassinations of the Kennedy’s.

The Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush war scenario seemed absurd; they used a truly horrible catastrophe, in which thousands died to promulgate a war we’re still mired in; they stripped Americans of constitutionally protected rights; federal funds were used to arm and take control of local police departments, arming and training police like those in Ferguson not unlike the arming of police for Assad, Hussein, Bin Laden… Not even Hitler, Franco or Mussolini achieved this kind of militarization and surveillance over their subjects.

Now cometh this man, Donald Trump, a cartoon caricature of a famous person; he sounds at first innocuous and a little stupid, like Donald Duck. But like England’s Brexit, he’s an opportunistic foil to tap national anxiety. And his wife, Melania, a Shakespearean twist. Can you see the two in regional theater productions of one of the Bard’s early plays: Trump as Bottom and Melania as Titania, the fairy queen in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or the other way around. Top Bottom Bottom Top, Cherries Rubies, Rubies Cherries. Make no mistake, the apparent randomness is planned. The persona of Trump is shaped to a standard–the archetypical white American male.

The minds that plan Mrs. Clinton’s ascendence are equally historiffically informed: Bill is a people’s person, ergo, Monica, but Hillary is long-barrel practical. Can you imagine the conversation of the three? With Mrs. Wasserman onboard, this pairing of powerful women is hot stuff. The Republicans are having a cow about it as their wives constrain them.

Americans are fed up with this. European analysis of American cupidity say, :what did you expect, they are us?” Who votes when the electoral system is a farce and the executive office, a model of a titular monarchy as a front for an oligarchy?

Fascinatingly, the erotic plays an important part in our puritanical culture. The democracy of it! Rumi, Osho and other prophets of tantra, rolling inddddddd their graves! Bill’s relieved of the title role so that now we can say that behind every powerful woman there’s a congenial man with a sexy glance. (Clang clang clang went the trolley and the myth emerges.)

And, here we are on the brink of catastrophic climate change and in the ring tonight, we have, in red satin trunks, the flamboyant heavy weight contender for the oval office, the tumescent warrior, Mr. Donald Trump, accompanied by his light headed goddess, Melania.

And opposite the Trumps, in pale green trunks held by a pink Patagonia technical climbing belt and pink training bra, defending herself, the myth of American and her husband’s virility, Ms. Hillary Clinton and they are spoiling for a fight.

How Trump fares in campaigning is uncertain, since having no record in governing at this point in history is a plus and it wouldn’t it be scary if he’s actually smart and erudite…Mephistophelean. Big Brother has finally arrived.